It is common in the medical industry for patients to simultaneously receive multiple intravenous medication solutions through intravenous tubing that is coupled together and inserted into the patient's veins or arteries at one or more sites on the body either via peripheral or central venous catheters. The multiple intravenous tubes are long and transparent and frequently become entangled, intertwined or twisted, making it difficult for medical personnel to determine which medication is flowing through which intravenous tube. Although problematic in a wide variety of clinical situations this is particularly so in desperately ill patients, such as in an intensive care setting, where patients have multiple peripheral and/or central lines containing a variety of high risk medications and possible incompatible solutions. It is also important during simple or complex anesthesia when patients are covered and the orientation of their intravenous lines has changed because of patient positioning (for example from supine to prone) and subsequent draping of various parts of their bodies. Another example would be in oncology, where many of the chemotherapy drugs have strictly defined compatibility ranges with other solutions and medications. All these lines are connected to multiple infusion pumps programmed to infuse each solution or medication at an appropriate and safe rate. Additional doses of medications have to be injected or infused at multiple times during the day through separate lines, all of which are transparent and look the same.
The complexity of this problem is compounded by staff shift changes, and, thereby, patient care delivered by different nursing personnel two to three times a day. Each time the nurses have to orient themselves to the various lines, solutions and different medications for each patient under their care. When there is a sudden change in a patient's condition, rapid line content recognition and use becomes a necessity during the emergency. These times are often handled by personnel unfamiliar with the patient.
Nurses often tag the multiple lines leading to a patient in an attempt to circumvent these problems, but this only provides identification of the line close to the tag and entangled lines must still be followed from the tag and disentangled for identification prior to use.
The development of lines with a structural marker along the entire length would offer distinct advantages over other methods of line identification. If the structural change included a chemiluminescent material, this would not only add color, but also enhanced visibility at night. A situation can be conceived that all patients in a particular clinical discipline who require a certain high risk solution will receive it in a specifically coded intravenous tubing. This would facilitate immediate recognition of the nature of the medication by all members of staff, regardless of whether or not they are directly involved in the care of the patient.
Finally, apart from the obvious safety advantages of intravenous tubing coded in this way, depending upon the nature of mode of the structural change and the type of color or chemiluminescent material added, these types of intravenous tubes would be far less threatening and possibly entertaining to children or very young patients.
Therefore it is desirable to provide intravenous tubing having an indicator for visibly distinguishing one intravenous tube from another intravenous tube. Electrical wiring is manufactured in various colors and color combinations for identification purposes. Additionally, coding bands have been used for identifying or coding electrical cables. However, no clear plastic intravenous tubing is available with any identification means present over a length of tubing for distinguishing one tube from another tube.